Back in the early days of our creative marketing business, Clients from Hell was a gift from the universe. It kept me sane, reading all of those stories from fellow comrades in arms. Now, however, I have a much different take on that site and others like it. What I once saw as a safe haven of a website where I could cope with the “realities” of our industry I now see as a place packed with professionals who just

A couple weeks ago, Karol wrote a great post about not getting cheated by your design clients. In that post, we recommended (as we always do) that you have a signed contract with most of your clients. But in the comments on that post, we had a fascinating question posted by GDB reader Ranjit that said this: Would emails and all other correspondence between client and designer not act as some sort of contract? I found Ranjit’s question extremely important

A few days ago, the phone rang at 10am. “Reliable! This is Lou,” my wife and business partner, Lou, said. (We run a design / marketing agency, but recently started Reliable: our new PSD to HTML & WordPress company). She took the call per usual. The guy had a lot of questions, and she had answers. But then, the call took a “weird” twist… The guy had some pretty wacky demands. He basically wanted us to ditch the process we

Thank you for applying; we went with someone more experienced. I heard that plenty coming straight out of college, and I bet you have, too. With today’s job market, recent and upcoming college grads are increasingly looking toward freelancing to follow their design dreams. But surviving as a freelancer requires a different set of skills than getting that high mark in design class, and most students find that their education didn’t prep them for the freelancing world ahead. Luckily, here

Every once in a while, we all come across a client who knows nothing about websites and has never even owned one. And although this introduces some unique challenges, we still want to help, right? However, if we decide to take on such a project, it will force us to put in some extra effort. Well, at least if we want to make it successful on both ends (ours and the client’s). So here’s a possible strategy on how to

Last year I attended a digital marketing conference in San Fran. I had three objectives: Learn cool stuff I could use for my own businesses and to help my clients. Pick up potential clients. Eat a lot of that famous west coast sushi :-) After all – I’m a digital marketer – so everyone at this conference is a potential client, right? But here’s the thing… From attending these conferences in the past, I know how people pitch their services

If you’re not careful as a freelancer, it can be easy to get caught up in the heat of the moment when talking with a client. But whatever you do, don’t let one of these phrases slip out while you’re working with a client or you may find yourself regretting it later! 1. “That’s just a bad idea.” If you ever get a hankerin’ to use this phrase, you wouldn’t be the first freelancer in history to feel that way.

Well that’s an odd headline, isn’t it? Calling out the almighty clients like that? Don’t get me wrong, I’d much rather live in a world where every project reaches its completion and no party gets the short end of the stick at the end of it. But unfortunately, this doesn’t always happen, so we should probably think the possible scenarios through and find some ways to protect ourselves from the ugly. Here’s how to make yourself un-cheat-able. 1. Have a

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